Climate Science Glossary

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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Past Climate Nudge

Thousand-year reconstructions of: (top) Northern Hemisphere temperature change over time from Moberg et al. (2005), including the HadCRUT instrumental temperature record in red; and (bottom) relative climate forcing resulting from solar input, carbon dioxide, and aerosols in Watts per square meter from Crowley (2000). The climate has changed in the past in response to climate forcings, and recently the dominant climate forcing has become human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels.